MRI Love Connection

 There was a long delay for the MRI yesterday and I was getting hungry, so I was kind of grouchy when I followed the yellow footprints down the hall to the glass doors of the MRI 1 waiting area.

 

Through the doors, the waiting area was deserted except for a very young woman in the crimson scrubs of a home attendant sprawled on a chair with her phone, clearly waiting.  She didn’t look up when I sat down next to her, but when a muscular, tattooed young man in the uniform of the hospital’s janitorial service showed up and started gathering trash bags and piling them on his cart, her phone was forgotten.  She started admiring his tattoos, and he told her he was planning to do some on his legs.  “They’re nice,” she said.  “The colors are good.”  “I get them all at once,” he said “I don’t go back and forth.”  He wasn’t just talking about tattoos, he was showing her he had the money for them.

I couldn’t hear everything once I went into the changing room, but he was closer so I heard him throw in a couple of references to “my first year of college” and “my second year of college.”

 

As I stepped out, way too big yellow socks flopping, he asked her “How old do you think I was when I got my first tattoo?” “17?” She guesses. “I was 12,” he said, laughing”. “Who tattooed you at 12?” she said sounding surprised. “One of these shops near my school. I hid it from my mother for two weeks, but  she likes to pack away the winter clothes and she said ‘what’s wrong with you? Why are you wearing long sleeves? Are you sick?’ She ordered me to take off my shirt, turn around, drop my hand and then she said ‘what is that?!’ She started rubbing it with a napkin and then she said ‘is that a tattoo???’ She was angry but she calmed down a little when she saw that it had her name. I got more at 14, 15, 16. I kept getting my ass beat. Probably about seven of these I got my ass beat for.”

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a young woman, also in housekeeping blue, who was collecting the used gowns and sheets for the laundry.  She asked him something, and he left, looking regretfully at the home attendant.  But then after the laundry lady left, he reappeared and they resumed their chat.  “Do you live in Brooklyn?” she asked.  “No, I’m in the Bronx.”  “Oh, you travel,” she said, which made no sense since he would also have to travel from Brooklyn.  “I take the express bus,” he said, another subtle brag.

The door to the MRI opened and a Russian tech led out a skinny elderly man floundering in two sets of oversize robes.  Now it was the young woman’s turn to interrupt the conversation, as she went to fetch the old man’s clothes from the locker and get him dressed.  It was my turn to head into the MRI room, so I don’t know the outcome of the MRI love connection.